


muster

by rincewitch



Series: Captain of the Storms [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: FFxivWrite2020, Gen, It Turns Out, Trench Warfare, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020, War sucks, operation archon, the maelstrom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26280088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rincewitch/pseuds/rincewitch
Summary: ffxiv write 2020 day 3: musterLieutenant Rinh Panipahr knows well the grand strategy playing out; she’s seen the maps that show how all of the elements of Operation Archon work in concert. She knows that the objective of the Maelstrom 1st Squadron, 3rd Levy isn’t to actually take the fortress-- it’s just to keep its garrison bottled up so they can’t relieve Castrum Meridianum as the vanguard of the Alliance strikes its decisive blow.She knows what they’re here to do.But it’s still hard to avoid a certain feeling of futility waking up every morning to participate in a siege with no hope of actually breaching the imperial lines. The levy’s job is to sit in the muddy trenches and hope that enough of them survive to keep up a steady bombardment of the enemy position.
Series: Captain of the Storms [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1431865
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5
Collections: #FFxivWrite2020 Final Fantasy 30 Day Writing Challenge, Emet-Selch's Wholesomely Debauched Bookclub FFXIV-Writes 2020 Collection





	muster

It’s yet another day in the long siege of Castrum Oriens.

Lieutenant Rinh Panipahr knows well the grand strategy playing out; she’s seen the maps that show how all of the elements of Operation Archon work in concert. She knows that the objective of the Maelstrom 1st Squadron, 3rd Levy isn’t to actually take the fortress-- it’s just to keep its garrison bottled up so they can’t relieve Castrum Meridianum as the vanguard of the Alliance strikes its decisive blow.

She  _ knows _ what they’re here to do.

But it’s still hard to avoid a certain feeling of futility waking up every morning to participate in a siege with no hope of actually breaching the imperial lines. The levy’s job is to sit in the muddy trenches and hope that enough of them survive to keep up a steady bombardment of the enemy position.

She can’t decide if this makes those few rituals of military life still observed after more than a week of this ordeal extremely unnecessary, or absolutely vital to maintain some sort of daily rhythm, to stop the days from blending together into an unceasing parade of horrors and privations.

There are a few less soldiers at every muster than the prior day’s. That, too, was something that Rinh feels should be marked. There would be time to bury and mourn the dead properly later, when the guns finally fell silent, but for now, a moment’s acknowledgement would have to be enough.

She climbs out of her dugout— it was large enough to sleep in, but not to stand up— slips on her greatcoat, and takes a moment to compose herself, murmuring a brief prayer to Nymeia. She can hear artillery firing further down the line, but her sector was quiet for the moment. She checks her pocketwatch— she still has a good quarter-bell before roll call, and she can smell coffee brewing.

She pours herself a cup and savors her first sip  of it, before unwrapping a piece of hardtack and dipping it in. Breakfast, such as it is.

She doesn’t mind the hardtack, honestly. Most of its deficiencies were more than made up for by the simple fact that there was  _ enough _ of it. Her colleagues might grouse about their rations, but they, presumably, have never felt real starvation nipping at their heels.

There’s a knot of other redcoats by the coffeepot— an informal muster before the real one. Officers and common soldiers mingled. She spots her fellow lieutenant— the unassuming fellow who commanded Battery C— bumming a cigarette off a grizzled old sergeant. 

Rinh commanded Battery A. There had once been a Battery B, but four days ago they’d been hit by a withering Garlean counter-barrage. The survivors were too few to man their guns, so they were dispersed into Batteries A, C, and D.

Their fast duly broken, the soldiers drift away from the coffee pot and back to their units. Rinh follows suit.

The men and women of Battery A are lined up in a neat row in their section of the trench, the guns they operated looming above them, silhouetted in the rising sun.

They snap to attention and salute.

Rinh salutes back. “At ease,” she says. She looks up and down the line and counts fourteen soldiers. There had been sixteen yesterday. Battery A had arrived in the trenches with a full complement of twenty-five.

“I’d like us to take a moment to recognize those we lost yesterday,” Rinh says, head bowed. “Private T’hahn Tia only recently came to us from B Battery, but in the time I knew him he proved himself a gallant and dutiful soldier.”

His death to friendly fire replays itself luridly in Rinh’s mind’s eye. It had been a wretched and painful end, even by wartime standards. He’d called out for his mother as he finally slipped away. It was heart-rending; Rinh took his trembling hand in hers; he couldn’t possibly have been more than two or three years younger than Rinh. He wasn’t the first soldier to die like that, clinging to her, and she doubts he’ll be the last.

“Sergeant Elspeth Gardner,” she says, after a respectable silence passed, “was the sort of non-commissioned officer who makes the Maelstrom  _ work. _ With her wisdom, intuition, and deep well of experience, she’s offered invaluable counsel to many of us over the years— myself included. We’ll miss her, sorely.”

Gardner’s death was the opposite of T’hahn’s, but no less pointless and cruel. She’d poked her head above the trench to double-check a gun’s trajectory, not trusting the firing table sight unseen. A Garlean sniper shot her immediately; she was dead before she hit the ground. All those decades of experience undone by a moment’s carelessness and fatigue.

Rinh’s aunt had taught her, long ago, that the dead are never  _ really  _ gone, so it’s incumbent upon the living to remember them, to tell their stories.

So she remembers. Someone has to.

“Dismissed,” she says, finally, “Man your guns.”


End file.
